


Comformity

by featheredpen



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-31 07:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featheredpen/pseuds/featheredpen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles' world is safe. He finds safety and comfort in the life he leads, which is a pretty normal one. A strange man shows up and stirs the status quo. Suddenly, Stiles notices the cracks a little too late as everything he believes in crashes and burns, revealing how fragile his world was. Is Stiles going to rise up from the ashes or crash and burn again? Stiles' world wasn't safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comformity

Stiles never understood people. Specifically, he never understood their tedious obsession when it comes to love. Consumed by it, their lives revolve around the search for "The One", their "savior", the "missing half of their soul".

He always thought it was ludicrous how people thought of themselves as incomplete unless they were spoken for. Their existence holding basically no meaning up to the moment a total stranger decides to show up and grant them with a reason to live for. What a collective amount of figurative bird poop. And as with literal bird poop, Stiles was not fond of it. It reeks of disappointment, lost cause and waste.

While he stands firmly by his belief, that doesn't mean he hates on people who disagree. Like his friend Scott.

He's what people would call a hopeless romantic, or as Stiles prefers to put it, hopeless. He's always on the lookout for his fairytale princess while still maintaining a mediocre GPA and lacking extracurricular records. A classic overachiever. And yet, Stiles does feel the occasional, insane and, thankfully, temporary pang of jealousy. Scott is easy-going when it comes to, most matters. Even more admirable, he is optimistic and not easily discouraged. Stiles has extremely limited capability of those qualities, although he masks that with a plethora of sarcastic remarks, eye-rolls, and colorful expressions of disdain. Unlikely to be admitted -ever- his best friend is something that keeps him positive about life in general. If people like Scott -meaning, people who put up with people like Stiles- walk around in this reality then, how bad can the world be?

For the longest of times, that question was answered by Stiles with a detailed account of how tiring, trite, and hollow life can be. It was hell.

Most of the times at least. It depends on whether the question is asked out loud. Stiles assumes everybody knows how gruelling living is, just that people avoid acknowledging this. And why wouldn't they?

Death is not something people prepare you for. It's too macabre and unpleasant. His premature experience with loss had had put a toll on him, on his outlook on life. From a spastic, carefree child, he transformed into a moody, troubled person. A darkness always seemed to creep around in the back of his mind, pushing him back when other people seemed to move forward. He was left behind somehow, his life suddenly gravitating around the pain he felt and the gloom that had yet to clear. And to this day, he blamed himself.

Scott was always there for him, all the way through it. He was there for Stiles when he couldn't sleep at night, he was there for him when he wouldn't eat for days, the constant exchange between anger tantrums and crying fits preventing him from physically being able to swallow. He had always tried to make him feel better, to give him a reason to smile and, as time passed, he succeeded.

Stiles decided it was time to accept what had happened, it was now an essential part of his being. Loss had touched him, and it was time to let life touch him too. He decided that he would not only survive but that he would live, he would enjoy life as much as he could and he would be grateful for everything he had, and he would do that to honor the people who are not able to do so anymore.

When he finally allowed himself to think about something other than disappointment, it was as if by magic the world surrounding him had suddenly changed. The warmth of the sun grazed his skin, and he felt it. The air he breathed filled his lungs with a reviving wind. He started feeling more light, just as a kid feels coming home from school and throwing his backpack on the floor after a long day. It is weird how decisions have such an instant impact on the way we experience the world. That's what Stiles realized. The world was just the world. The people are the ones plastering filters and looking at it through them. And Stiles finally chose ones that allowed him to highlight the beauty and shadow the pain.

His new-found filter made him realized that, no matter what state of mind someone is living through, a ten-hour shift is grim and will be always grim. Luckily for his blistering feet, there were only 5 minutes left until he was officially free. Free to start cleaning up before closing of course. As Stiles started to close the register and count the day's earnings, a man walked in the now deserted bakery.

"I'm sorry but we are just closing," said Stiles politely, but internally pleading this person won't manage to ruin his new-found zen.

"Which means you're not closed yet," muttered the man, spitefully.

Stile's hymen was broken a long time ago when it came to obnoxious customers, he worked at a coffee shop previously and learned early on that un-caffeinated people in the morning have more in common with killer wasps than with the human race. It was just harder to justify throwing hot beverages at them than at insects.

"Certainly, that is what I just said, but with different wording," Stiles responded, trying to at least pretend to have a pleasant demeanour, "So what can I do for you?"

The brooding man didn't look pleased. He seemed like the kind of man others steered away from, much less talk back to. But it was not possible to ignore him now, he already talked to him, and it would be hard to justify this to his boss when she sees the CCTV recordings.

The man's stare had rested on Stiles, which made him quite uncomfortable. They are in a bakery shop after all, not a Shakespeare play.

The man spoke irritatedly at Stiles, "Carla told me he left my keys with an employee."

At the mention of that name, Stiles froze. Stiles' boss was an intimidating woman. She had one of those faces that was not capable of human expression of emotion. But Stiles had to pay the bills so he had to resist not to run away every time he saw her. Seriously, she could freak out her own reflection.

"Y-yes sure, wait just a sec," Stiles sprinted to the back where he kept a package Carla indistinctly had muttered someone would come pick up. While he was leaving, he swore he saw the strange man chuckle under his breath.

"Here you go," said Stiles, breathless as he handed him the package, without looking at him.

"Thanks," he replied, not swaying his eyes from Stiles before turning away and leaving.

Stiles felt a little uneasy. The stranger didn't leave the best first impression, not to mention he looked readily prepared to yell at him, but that last look conveyed something he didn't know how to process. He was intrigued yet at the same time anxious, which was a first for him. He felt confused, that passive-aggressive behavior creating some question marks. Not only about the reason behind the bizarre behavior of the stranger but about the reaction it managed to produce.

That was the alarming part. When you live in a monotone, all-or-nothing mentality for so long, you don't consider many things, if any at all, since all the questions have been answered. You don't rock the boat. When you finally start to see some cracks forming, how do you explain that? How do you explain it when you don't like this internal turmoil but feel like you need it? Was your world all that stable to begin with or was that just another illusion your mind formed to create some safe constant? Maybe once something's broken, you can only pretend to fix it but you're bound to notice the cracks at some point.

Suddenly, there were so many unanswered questions for Stiles to deal with.

His internal state was, for the second time in that day, changed.

Although Stiles felt a certain amount of distress, that would not justify not closing up on time. Eventually he will get over this and that strange man whose face he can't even recall. That encounter was weird. But to Stiles, it was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in a long time. He actually was affected by the behaviour of someone. Instead of just ignoring his rudeness, Stiles felt anger towards it. Finally a note of red in his monotone world.

Just as he was leaving the shop, Stiles had hoped to see the stranger again. Now that he clocked out, he could respond to his behaviour accordingly.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
